[News] UK children are shorter and unhealthier through poverty.

[KZNSeagull]

Is this a new problem?
Sugar was everywhere in the 80s/90s and ultra processsed food and fast food became really popular

Fast food was everywhere but it was more of a treat than it is now, plus you had to get off your arse to actually go and get it. Now you just press a few buttons on an app for some mug to deliver it to you or you call the police when KFC runs out of chicken. Fast food has also evolved over the years so that it is now deliberately addictive.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

how much is bad diet and how much is lack of exercise though? My diet as a kid was poor. At home we ate well but at school it was cakes, sweets and chips every day. But I had a very active childhood and was out cycling and playing most days and down the beach swimming every day in the summer.

 

[KZNSeagull]

Working at Tesco it is very interesting to see what happens with special offers, particularly now that they implemented the HFSS thing even though the government cancelled it. The 30% less fat range of Mr Kipling cakes do not sell very well at all even on special offer - put the normal fat ones on special offer and people cannot get enough of them. A lot of the bread that is pumped full of preservatives is HFSS compliant (Hovis Best of Both for example). Since Covid, expiry dates on bread have got longer - Hovis used to be 5 days, now it is usually 6 days, sometimes 7.

Things have to change and fast - people are still obsessed with smoking being a drain on the NHS but obesity, if it isn't already, will be the biggest drain of resources soon. There is a woman at work, mid 20's, who has already had her gall bladder removed due to dreadful diet (a packet of 4 doughnuts for breakfast for example) and the number of people using mobility scooters due to their size is ridiculous. It's rather sad really.

 

[BN41Albion]

how much is bad diet and how much is lack of exercise though? My diet as a kid was poor. At home we ate well but at school it was cakes, sweets and chips every day. But I had a very active childhood and was out cycling and playing most days and down the beach swimming every day in the summer.

Definitely exercise is a huge part. Remember as a kid in the early 90s getting penny sweets on the way to school in the morning, for example! But we were so active out and about all the time. I also think like I said before that kids are consuming even more sugar now through the likes of massive Monster drinks on top of chocolate/sugary 'treats' etc

 

[BN41Albion]

. There is a woman at work, mid 20's, who has already had her gall bladder removed due to dreadful diet (a packet of 4 doughnuts for breakfast for example)

My god Beggars belief

 

[nevergoagain]

You remind me of my first trip to Chicago. I could not believe the size of many of the locals. I was in my late 20s by then and had travelled a bit. These were thighs and arses in dimensions I though were physically unachievable. Orca fat.

I asked around, and the general consensus was this is what can happen when very poor people become relatively wealthy. We were skinny as kids because we had very little money. My family was working class and lived from week to week. There were no luxuries. But most food was fresh. We were all skinny.

Then I remember a slow 'improvement' in finances in the early 1970s, and mum exploring convenience foods. Vesta curries. Fray Bento steak and kidney pies. Smiths Crisps in the house... and so on. The changes were beginning.

And even in my house as an adult I am guilty of carelessness. My son is probably 4 stone heavier than me. Having money meant the fridge and cupboards were always full. I regret now not imposing some sort of discipline. But our lifestyles were not compatible with it. For many years I was a single parent so even though relatively well off, I was time-poor, and the fridge door was never locked.

The British problem is a mix of ignorance, recent generations being more cash rich than previous generations, and this particular British belligerence. I admit to the latter myself. I don't like being told to live differently.

Agree on this, also the digital age is equally to blame, we never had all the tech to occupy us so went out and played football, cricket, cycled, made dens etc. far easier to now stay at home on Snapchat, Playstation etc. Not saying I blame the kids as there's a real FOMO if they don't stay connected but do encourage mine to find that balance as much as I can.

 

[beorhthelm]

...

For one, it's a ballache having to check the ingredients and also know what to look for in the first place. I've been eating a brand of peanut butter for a while now and only recently found out it's chock full of palm oil.

what did you think was in peanut butter? or is it the type of oil that surprised you (though been used in spreads for years).

this isn't about poverty, it's education and information, and people not want to be told what to do. food is so cheap now we can buy it pre-packaged for less than cost to make ourselves*. so buy and eat less of it. everything now comes with the traffic lights telling you the calories, protein, fat sugar content. are we say people are too poor to read the label, dont understand, or just dont care enough? or they just want it anyway because it taste nice. fast food and confectionary are relatively expensive, if people are buying lots it's not due to poverty.

also there's a gross distortion of the facts in the article. it says height is "falling", refering to study showing height is increasing less that the rate in other countries.

* or can we? seems a common contradiction on the subject. the prod noses will tell us how cheap it is to make something from scratch one minute, the next we're told all the processed food is so cheap its the only thing the poor can afford. what is expensive is the more fancy and exotic fruit and veg, away from apples, orange, carrots and peas. if you insist on kiwi fruit or organic vine ripened tomotes in January, you'll pay some more than a couple of carrots. we dont need to eat a lot of fruit and veg for balance, they are packed full of the necessary vitamins and minerals and only used to eat lots of bulk.

 

[Hovegull]

I think exercise is definitely as much a part of this. My diet as a kid/teen in 80/90s was rubbish.
So much processed foods, crisps, chocolates, sweets back then - all readily accessible. I wouldn’t go anywhere it these days.
But I did do a lot of sports, and therefore haven’t ever had a weight issue.
Get the point about it all being delivered these days, but that’s even more expensive way to do things no?

 

[BBassic]

what did you think was in peanut butter? or is it the type of oil that surprised you (though been used in spreads for years).

I honestly had no idea palm oil was in peanut butter, I never bothered to think about it. Would just buy it and chow down.

But I'm trying to be more conscious of what I'm eating both from an environmental aspect and from a doctor telling me to stop shoveling shit into my body aspect

What's funny is the brand, Whole Earth, have one type of smooth peanut butter that has palm oil and another which has none. I've just switched to the other one.

 

[BBassic]

100% - the problem being that without all of this crap, we’re probably already well past the ability to sustain current population levels.

I read a pretty decent book on farming in the UK, called English Pastoral by James Rebanks. I’d recommend it, it gives what I’d describe as a decent balanced outlook on farming’s evolution from the 1960s to now.

I've had that book on a wishlist for a while, time to make the purchase!

 

[dippy2449]

I agree with you, it IS a number of factors. Without wishing to get into a 'Four Yorkshiremen' type of reverse-boasting I was brought up in a single-parent family on a council estate. We survived on benefits and charity. A lot of others on the estate were also hard-up and obviously no one was rich. One thing we all had in common - we were all as thin as a row of fence posts. Not malnourished, I just think the food must have been different back in in the 1960s. And the portions were much smaller.

You were Loocky

 

[Chicken Run]

I agree with you, it IS a number of factors. Without wishing to get into a 'Four Yorkshiremen' type of reverse-boasting I was brought up in a single-parent family on a council estate. We survived on benefits and charity. A lot of others on the estate were also hard-up and obviously no one was rich. One thing we all had in common - we were all as thin as a row of fence posts. Not malnourished, I just think the food must have been different back in in the 1960s. And the portions were much smaller.

You can tell a Yorkshireman but you can’t tell him nothing….

 

[Forster's Armband]

We are a less active society, blaming BREXIT is crazy, this is down, in part, to parenting. Some adults are either to busy or too lazy, and see iPads, Xbox, TVs etc as suitable ways of amusing the kids. Taking them out is either too much of a task for them or unaffordable. Similarly, with food, the supermarkets, fast food joints, etc produce processed crap food which is quicker and easier to use to feed their offspring, some have lost the art of cooking from base which is healthier and normally much cheaper.

The classic "it's all the parent's fault". Over FOUR MILLION kids in the UK live in poverty. Those parents normally go without to try and feed their kids, even then all they can afford is the cheapest crap which is processed to f***. It's our government, big business, and ultimately the capitalist bullshit society we live in's fault not parents of kids who can afford x-boxs and ipads.

This is what the people in power with money want us to do, turn on each other rather than look up and blame those with the power and money to stop kids in Britain in 2024 from being malnourished and in poverty.

 

[Machiavelli]

That article is, and most likely this thread, is a great example of "problem X is because of [insert what I'm currently obsessed with]"

You can't argue with the statistics, but the causes are most likely a complex web of variables. You can't just pin it all on poverty, as the guardian loves to do,when there are so many other social factors at play.

Agree with what @Bold Seagull said about supermarkets, and will add that if you make a load of nutritionally shite food cheap, abundant and convenient , then it's not surprising that people will gravitate towards it. Education is also a huge factor, it's possible to make good food for not much money (as the Asians and Africans) but it requires knowledge that we seem to have lost in the UK.

You're right, there are multiple factors at play, but they're not all as equal as others. My reading of the apt post from @Bold Seagull is that there is a singular relatively simple (but difficult to implement) solution: regulation.
We're more likely to see that with the next government, but it'll generate a whole host of hostility.
There is also the option of taxation, which has worked brilliantly with tobacco and, more recently, sugary drinks.

 

[Machiavelli]

what did you think was in peanut butter? or is it the type of oil that surprised you (though been used in spreads for years).

this isn't about poverty, it's education and information, and people not want to be told what to do. food is so cheap now we can buy it pre-packaged for less than cost to make ourselves*. so buy and eat less of it. everything now comes with the traffic lights telling you the calories, protein, fat sugar content. are we say people are too poor to read the label, dont understand, or just dont care enough? or they just want it anyway because it taste nice. fast food and confectionary are relatively expensive, if people are buying lots it's not due to poverty.

also there's a gross distortion of the facts in the article. it says height is "falling", refering to study showing height is increasing less that the rate in other countries.

* or can we? seems a common contradiction on the subject. the prod noses will tell us how cheap it is to make something from scratch one minute, the next we're told all the processed food is so cheap its the only thing the poor can afford. what is expensive is the more fancy and exotic fruit and veg, away from apples, orange, carrots and peas. if you insist on kiwi fruit or organic vine ripened tomotes in January, you'll pay some more than a couple of carrots. we dont need to eat a lot of fruit and veg for balance, they are packed full of the necessary vitamins and minerals and only used to eat lots of bulk.

I obviously disagree with your post, but I'd have thought peanuts would be in peanut butter, and that they constitute either all the ingredients or a tiny (less than a %?) amount of others.

 

[Machiavelli]

I honestly had no idea palm oil was in peanut butter, I never bothered to think about it. Would just buy it and chow down.

But I'm trying to be more conscious of what I'm eating both from an environmental aspect and from a doctor telling me to stop shoveling shit into my body aspect

What's funny is the brand, Whole Earth, have one type of smooth peanut butter that has palm oil and another which has none. I've just switched to the other one.

Yes but, according to some on here, it's because you're not educated and can't be bothered spending your time perusing ingredients lists of every item you purchase and consume.

Edit: some are recommending Rebanks, but Michael Pollan is also worth a go who might help those that are posting 'when I were a lad' reminiscences recognise that the current situation is remarkably different to what it was in the 1930s.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Been going on for too long to have anything g to do with Covid.

We need proper school meals and to introduce proper education over nutrition

Yes and no

Lockdown enhanced the behaviour of some, the behaviour of not going to school/work has carried on.

But it's a long term issue as you say.

I do have issue with it being laid all at the Government, parents have to take some responsibility on the issues in the articles.

Poor diet/lack of exercise is a parenting issue

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

how much is bad diet and how much is lack of exercise though? My diet as a kid was poor. At home we ate well but at school it was cakes, sweets and chips every day. But I had a very active childhood and was out cycling and playing most days and down the beach swimming every day in the summer.

Yes. The outcome is the product of several different issues:

Money
Culture
Parental attitude
Availability of bad shit
Disinterest in good shit
The hysterical cult of Stranger Danger.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

You're right, there are multiple factors at play, but they're not all as equal as others. My reading of the apt post from @Bold Seagull is that there is a singular relatively simple (but difficult to implement) solution: regulation.
We're more likely to see that with the next government, but it'll generate a whole host of hostility.
There is also the option of taxation, which has worked brilliantly with tobacco and, more recently, sugary drinks.

Has the sugar tax worked? Genuine question

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Yes. The outcome is the product of several different issues:

Money
Culture
Parental attitude
Availability of bad shit
Disinterest in good shit
The hysterical cult of Stranger Danger.

Stranger danger, gone are the days you could just get a bag of sweets from the nice man in a blacked out van